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Maureen Orth: My Night Chez Karl

"Look!" Karl Lagerfeld exclaimed, holding up a vampy platform pump. "It's the James Bond shoe." Who else but Lagerfeld would have thought to make the shoes' stiletto heel a small pistol? "I like it because it is politically incorrect," he said, peering over his ubiquitous black shades.

It was Wednesday, May 7, and we were inside the designer's vast photo studio on the Left Bank in Paris. As usual, Lagerfeld was doing several things at once. He was shooting the press-kit photos for the Chanel cruise collection, which is set to debut soon in Miami. An enormous pink sheet of photo paper was the backdrop for his blonde, size-zero model, and the shoes were vintage Lagerfeld—creative, surprising, edgy. He was also paying a modicum of attention to his German publisher, Gerhard Stiedl, who was there with the first printings of Lagerfeld's latest photography book, Metamorphoses of an American, A Cycle of Youth 2003–2008, which will be launched tomorrow night at the Pace/MacGill gallery, in New York. When I profiled Lagerfeld for Vanity Fair, in 1992, his photography career was in its infancy. Since then, he has produced several photography books and collected 250,000 more. His studio is situated behind a bookstore he owns on the rue de Lille, and he often tears pages out of his books and literally draws on them for inspiration.

"Have you met Brad?'" Lagerfeld asked. Brad Kroenig, a top male mode who, at 6 foot 1, looks vaguely like Matthew McConaughey, was sparkling in the same silver sequined jacket he'd worn to the Met Costume gala the night before. He and Lagerfeld attended New York's "party of the year" together, and they had just arrived in Paris the afternoon I saw them, none the worse for wear.Kroenig, an easy-going 29-year-old with the uncanny ability to transform himself to look like everyone from James Dean to Errol Flynn, is the American whose "metamorphoses" Lagerfeld has been documenting for the past five years. "I thought it would be interesting to follow the physical evolution of someone," the designer told me in his rapid-fire German accent. "Without him knowing it, he has an unbelievable range. It's a kind of gift. He knows nothing about these things. It's fun for somebody to skate on these images and interpretations without being an actor—the characters, the situations, the attitudes, while at the same time to stay a completely modern all-American."

By this time, Brad had changed into a pink cashmere Chanel cardigan for the press-kit shoot. He plopped down beside me on one of the long sofas and talked about his life as a worldwide muse for Karl Lagerfeld. He had never heard of Erroll Flynn, for example, but "Karl sent me a bunch of old movies to watch and books to go through," and soon enough, with the right makeup and clothes, presto!

A St. Louis native who played soccer at the University of Miami, Brad is a what- me-worry type who seems pretty unaffected by the raffine circles he's been traveling in. "He is very friendly with everyone—what the French call a mascot," said Lagerfeld. "His face has not been devitalized by the world's demons."

After changing again, this time into darker sequins, Brad told me how excited he was that he and his girlfriend are having a baby, in December. He hadn't really thought through how she is going to keep on managing a real-estate company in Florida while he stays in New York and continues traveling all over the world, but traveling is definitely his thing. "I think I can pretty much feel the essence of a country from doing a fashion show in a place like the Great Wall of China," he said.

As for Karl Lagerfeld, he has other projects in the works as well. When the shoot was finished, he proudly showed me the box for Part IV of Grand Theft Auto, the violent video game, in which he stars as an evil D.J. who spins monstrous techno music.

As I was leaving, I congratulated the eternal polymorph for being named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People. "I don't know why they did that," he replied. "I have never done anything for humanity."